Known locally as Hugh O'Neill's Well, the spring sits near the source of the Silver River in the Glenleitir Valley, and its association with the earl of Tyrone rests on a simple, plausible logic: armies need water, and this one passed close by.

In the autumn of 1601, Hugh O'Neill led his forces south from Ulster in a desperate effort to join the Spanish landing at Kinsale, Co. Cork. The march covered hundreds of miles through difficult terrain and hostile territory, and the route took his men through the Slieve Bloom Mountains, where O'Neill reportedly made camp in the Glenleitir Valley. The spring at Baunreagh, lying close to the Silver River's headwaters, may well have supplied water to that encampment. The campaign ended in defeat at the Battle of Kinsale in January 1602, a turning point that effectively ended Gaelic political power in Ireland and led, within years, to the Flight of the Earls. That a quiet upland spring in Co. Laois should carry the memory of that moment gives it a weight that has nothing to do with scale or spectacle.